Boiling Point
by MissNessarose
Summary: The TARDIS doesn't have functional air conditioning at the moment and Susan can't take the heat. Also, why you should read instructions very, very carefully.


"_Grandfather," _she groans, slumping across the floor on her back. This is ridiculous. The energy unit went and broke, and they'd found out that the charger usually hooked up to it had gone and broken. So, the Doctor decided, they'd recharge the damned thing themselves. This involved rotating near a rather unpleasant sun.

They realized rather quickly that with the energy unit out, all of the cooling and air conditioning was also out of operation.

They have no choice, though, and have to wait another good hour and a half for the charging to finish. A slow process, but it's their only option. In the nasty heat, though, Susan thinks she might die.

Or, at least, it feels like it.

So much so that she's given up and pulled down the straps of her dress, pulling the button-up shirt off and just wearing the dress. It looks a little ridiculous, but with the four of them in various states of decency and undress, she thinks that none of them really care.

"I don't think I've ever had a summer this bad at home," Barbara notes, fanning herself with a thin stack of papers. Susan has found herself a box fan—some early 2000's technology lying around in the back room—and props it up nicely in front of her on the floor. Ian comes back with a couple glasses of ice water—after finally figuring out to get the ice cube part of the machine in the kitchen to work properly.

"Here," he offers. Barbara looks at him gratefully, and takes a small sip, looking at him sweetly and then proceeding to dump it over her head.

"Barbara!" he laughs, and she sighs.

"That feels _great." _

She takes a second glass from his hands and then tosses it over his own head, watching his expression melt into relief.

"It does," he says simply, sitting on the floor beside her chair and dumping the third over the both of them. The Doctor gives them a moderately reprimanding glare, but doesn't comment.

"Don't knock it until you try it," Ian tells him. "There's plenty more ice now that the thing's working, anyways."

An hour to go, and they've already coated half of the room in ice water.

Good progress, Susan thinks.

* * *

There's a half an hour left before the charging will be complete, but the ice water situation is no longer getting them anywhere. Though it feels good, there's only so much sense in coating the floors in water. Susan thinks hard to figure out another source of cool, sweet relief, and she nearly trips when she stands up sharply, slipping a little on the water.

"Grandfather!" she shouts in the silence, though they're all _right there. _He gives her a stern gaze, shaking his head lightly, and she quiets down considerably.

"That old junk room in the back hall, it's still on the left, right?" she asks eagerly, and he nods, not saying anything to her as she goes sprinting off into the TARDIS. The quiet resumes—with a few crashes and clangs from the junk room as Susan sorts through it, he supposes—and is soon joined by the low hum of the machine in the next room shooting out ice cubes. Why she wants them is beyond the Doctor, but he's not going to get up to go check.

They're all a little surprised when she drags a large, plastic circular pool into the console room and stands beside it with a proud gesture. It's filled with ice cubes.

Barbara regrets nothing and goes to stand in the pool, nodding.

"This is really good. Try this," she directs them, pointing sternly at the pool. She—much to Ian's shock—slips her thin sweater off over her head, only in her slip, and shimmies her skirt up as high as is decent before sitting down in the ice cubes, her arms hanging over the edge.

Susan slides in beside her with a grin, and soon the four of them are flung in this tiny ice cube pool, sighing with pleasure at the cold. Susan is asleep, and Barbara and Ian look practically comatose when the Doctor gets out of the pool to check the charger.

"Susan," he says sharply, enough to fling her out of sleep, and she blinks before looking at him eagerly.

"Is it done?" she asks excitedly, her excitement catching the attention of her two pool-mates.

"Please tell me that we can go," Ian begs them.

"Child, you read the label completely wrong!"

She frowns and climbs out of the pool to look over the instruction pamphlet again, and her face falls. She's not stupid, she knows...just distracted, often.

"Oh," is all she can say, and she offers him an apologetic smile. "It said one hundred and twenty seconds, not...not minutes."  
Two hours they'd waited. Two hours for absolutely no reason other than to dump ice cubes around.

"But look on the bright side," she says proudly. "We have a really great pool now!"

The Doctor swears he will _never _loom a child ever again.


End file.
